Tip Toe
by moxiebird
Summary: Being eleven is tough. There's the looming threat of middle school, increased responsibilities, watching peers bloom into pubescent monsters, constantly fighting with Kaylee and Mike, and trying not to think about mom's problems. And it seems that I have a way of attracting mythical creatures. And mom knows something about it. Wonder what's up with that.


"Come back here!"

I run through the bushes, giggling wildly, the key gripped firmly in my hand. I can hear Kaylee, screaming at me to come back, along with her boyfriend.

Kaylee's my half sister and just about the dumbest person I know. I hate her, and I am pretty sure that she's killed most of her brain cells through nail polish fumes. I know that she won't follow me through the pricker bushes, because she's wearing her brand new skirt, which she was talking about for hours on the phone last night. The pricker bushes would completely shred its flimsy lacy material.

She's wearing the skirt because today is the day that Darren, her boyfriend, has come back from college, and she wanted to look extra special. She made sure to tell me about fifty times this morning not to mess anything up.

"Listen, squirt," she said, "you cause any problems and I will personally make your life miserable."

Kaylee's been dating Darren for nearly three years now, he's two years older than her, which is why these days I don't have to deal with him too much. He's burly, and works out a lot, and will make sure to tell you this if given the opportunity. He's handsome, I guess, but a bit in the way, say, a cow would be. Big, muscular, and lacking a certain degree of intelligence. He likes to brag a lot, and he likes to make sure that I know that he's in charge.

"Listen, you little punk," he often says, "you mess with me and I'll break your fingers."

Yeah, I don't really like him either.

If you haven't noticed, between my sister and Darren, I've been getting told to listen a lot. Listening, though, can be pretty difficult for me, I have ADHD, you see, and so you really can't blame me when I don't do exactly what they want.

Today was the day that Kaylee was bringing Darren to meet the rest of the family. We're having a little gathering with my step grandparents who live nearby. Darren decided to bring something he was really proud of: a pair of handcuffs. Honestly, I think he's a little too old to be playing with toys, but when he showed the rest of the family I sat politely and listened to him blab away. Darren's training to be a police officer, and apparently all police officers need handcuffs or something like that. I guess I should be happy for Darren, I know plenty of nice police officers, but I also know quite a few that are similar to him. You know, with looks, intelligence, and mannerisms that are rather bovine. Including, but not limited to, charging anything that even vaguely annoys them .

Kaylee was just about ready to explode with pride as he went around and showed Mike, my stepfather, and my step grandparents. And as they were all chatting away, I couldn't help but notice that Darren had left the keys to the handcuffs on the table. That was awfully careless, I thought, the keys could easily get buried between newspapers, or slide off and get lost under the couch, and so I decided to help Darren out a little. I picked up the keys and slipped them into my pocket.

Now I felt that sort of intense jittery feeling I got right before I was about to do something that I was really going to regret.

"Darren." I said, "Could you show me how those things work?" He looks over and squints at me, uncertain whether to trust me or not. Kaylee, who has a lot more experience with me, just flat out glares. _Ouch, Sis. I see we may have a few trust issues here._ I just give Darren the biggest and sweetest smile I have, the one that could melt the heart of the rock.

Of course, Darren is a little denser than that, so he sort of squints and glares at me, but a little reluctantly he says, "Well sure, I guess."

I let my best grin spread across my face "Yay!" I say. _Yay! Any small quantities of guilt I was feeling are now completely gone!_

"Well, it's relatively easy, you see." He turns towards the adults, grinning that smile of his. Gosh, I hate the guy, but he does have a winning smile, which adults love. It's the type that that just radiates maturity, and wholesomeness like a slice of unbuttered multigrain bread, and for me, is just about as unpalatable.

"You just slip the hands through like this–– only of course normally it would be behind the person's back," he says, slipping his own hands through, "and snap them shut like this." He clicks it closed. "There."

"Oh, that's cool." I say, and now turn around to leave, just like I have to use the bathroom or something.

"Finna," says Mike, "you need to stay for a while." I stop, my heart is beating a little quicker now, because I have very little time to slip away before they find out that the key is missing, and blame it on the most plausible cause–– me.

"I have to use the bathroom." I say smoothly.

Darren turns over to Kaylee "Sweetie, do you think you could unlock this?" He holds up his hands. My step father is briefly distracted by their interactions, he looks back at me with pursed lips, though "Don't you think you can––"

"That's weird," says Kaylee, "I can't find it anywhere." She stops then, it has taken her a surprisingly long time to figure this out, I think, especially considering the numerous other pranks I have pulled on her. A horrified look flashes over her face.

"Why you little piece of scum!" She lunges across the coffee table at me.

"Yep!" I say, "I really have to go!" _Gosh, that girl's going to take my eyes out someday with those nails. _I stumble backwards, Darren looks at me with absolute hatred, and Mike looks like he might loss it too. Seeing that the situation is beyond redemption, I dash towards the door.

I crash through the pricker bushes, which cut up my legs, heading towards the forest. I am practically flying, and I know that even Darren with all his bull-like strength would be unable to catch me. I'm the fastest kid in my grade, and I know the pathways through the woods and brier behind our house like the back of my hand, so Darren simply doesn't stand a chance.

A long time ago, Kaylee and me used to play in pricker bushes together. Don't judge me, though, I mean, back then she was a completely different person. We would make fairly houses and hunt for unicorns. Mother would sometimes play with us too; Kaylee and me would hide in among the while she searched for us. I can remember the sound of her laughter, when we jumped out at her, hugging her legs tightly, together.

Perhaps I get a little too distracted by these memories, though. As I run into the actual forest, I stumble slightly, and then fall flat onto the ground, hitting my chin on a tree root. I sit up a little dazed, and start to get up, but that small amount of time was just enough for Darren to catch up to me. He yanks me up.

"Give it back! Give it back!" he roars at me. Kaylee, to my surprise is making her way slowly through the bushes and into the forest area we have come to. I watch her as she puts down each foot carefully as not to get her shoes dirty.

Darren yanks at my hand, and it hurts, I'm a little frightened now, he snorts, making sounds, I think, so much like an angry bull.

"Ow! That hurts!" I am truly terrified. I try to back up but I find that he has my arm firmly and securely in his grip.

He yanks the key away, breathing hard, it has taken him a lot of effort to catch up to me, and it has made him all the more angry. He pushes me back, like a small child might push another on a playground. And I am a child. And I am feeling very small now.

He fumbles with the lock for a while, before eventually freeing his hands.

"Who's the winner now you little snot!" he roars.

Tears begin to spill over my face."Kaylee––" I whimper. Kaylee looks a little lost, but she turns towards Darren.

"She's just a kid Darren, really." she says, nervously.

"Huh! Huh! Who's the winner!" He is right in my face now, and I am all out crying, hot and cold seems to rush up and down my body. He pulls back, and I think, for a second, that I will be okay. Then there is a large noise, almost like a cracking and a booming combined, and I wonder what it is, until I find myself on the ground, clutching my ringing ear. He has hit me, I realize.

"Darren!" Kaylee screeches. He stands above me, breathing heavily, and I scoot back, worried that he will kick me. He turns abruptly, though, and stomps back out of the forest through the pricker bushes. Kaylee is sobbing, and so am I, and I think for a second that perhaps she will comfort me, but she scowls at me.

"Why do you always have to ruin everything?" She wails, and then she turns and runs back through the prickers, ignoring whatever effects they may have on her skirt, which she bought especially for today.

I am a little lost, and I know it, inside of me. And so I do what I have always done at times like these, and let my feet take me where they will. I don't even think about where I am going, but I am not surprised when I find myself in front of the hospital. It is getting late out, a car passes by, and I can hear the heavy sound of music coming from it, things are beginning to grow golden in the deep afternoon light. I rub my eyes a few times, hoping to remove the sticky traces of tears, and then walk up to the front door.

"Finna!" says the lady at the front desk when I come in. I'm happy to see that it is Evie, both Kaylee and I's favorite front desk lady. Sometimes it is another woman named Roxanne, and she's always kind of grouchy.

"What's the matter sweetie, you feeling alright?" says Evie.

I let out a small hiccup, which I know is not terribly convincing, but I nod.

"Can I see my mom?" I ask, a little shyly, but I am mustering up all the braveness I can right now.

"Sure, honey," says Evie. "She should be just finishing dinner now."

Mom wasn't always sick. I mean, I know what you're thinking sarcastically: no really! But it helps me, though, to think of this. When I remember that she was once healthy and happy, and how much light and life she had inside of her, I can think that she will someday be okay.

Mom, you see, just isn't the sickly type, she's the type that would get sick, and then get better, and have stories to tell about it. The sickly type of person, I think, would be really sweet and nice, but also really subdued, and in the end he or she would just end up dying. You can see this type of character a lot in old novels, not that I really read that much classic literature, but mom explained a few things to me about such books. For instance, often times there's this really sweet, kind, humble, and overally angelic, who nine times out of ten ends of dying. Too good for this world or something like that. Take for instance "Little Women" (spoiler alert for people who might actually appreciate literature!) in it there is this absolutely sweet girl named Beth, she takes all sorts of crud from life, and is always all smiley and cheerful about it. And who would have guessed? In the end she ends up dying!

My mother, though, is nothing like this type of girl, not that she's not at all kind, but she can also be a real prankster, and if life gave her crud, she would give it back. So as you can see, she's nothing like Beth, who, by the way, I only really know about from the movie "Little Women", which I watched after my mom rented it, when, the night before we where supposed to be done reading the book she found out that I was only a few pages in, due, in part, to my dyslexia.

That incident was actually only a few months before Mom got diagnosed with cancer. She had been really lethargic lately, and had been losing a lot of weight, and we brought her to the hospital thinking that, I don't know, she might have tape-worms or something, and multiple tests later we found she had cancer.

Evie leads me up to her room; we sit through an awkwardly long seeming elevator ride, and when the door open with a ding I follow her down the hallway to my mother's room. Evie slips the key into the lock and turns it with a click, then pushes open the door. I stand outside for a second, composing myself, and then walk in.

Everyday, it seems, she grows a bit thinner, and her smile a bit more worn around the edges. She looks up at me and I can tell that she is tired, and that she does not feel well, and immediately I feel guilty for coming, because I know that the reason that I have come, even though I may argue differently to my self, is to be comforted in my own troubles.

"Finna," she says, "what's the matter?" I rub my eyes like I am tired, but in fact I am brushing away a few tears, I walk forward and pull out the stool that is nearby her bed and sit down.

"Hi mom. How are you feeling today?" I brush a bit of hair that has fallen over her eyes out of the way, as she used to do with me.

"Oh, okay." she says. Her gaze wonders up my face and a look of concern comes over her eyes, "What happened to you, honey?" She reaches up and touches where Darren hit me, I wince, I know that when I look in the mirror there will be a big purple-ish bruise.

"Aww, its not that bad mom. You should see the other guy." She laughs, but I see concern flicker across her face. She is very tired, though, and she simply does not have the strength to do anything much about it.

"You should tell Mike what happened." she says. "What ever it was." I am feeling a little tired too, and so I snort in disdain.

"Finna," she says, a little stronger. "You're his responsibility to watch over." I'm not sure if this is actually supposed to make me feel better, it: a) sounds like she's trying to prepare me for her death, which is most certainly not going to happen, and b) Makes me feel like I really do have nobody looking out for me in the universe.

Perhaps the overall crumby-ness of this conversation, due to the fact that neither of us seem to have the energy to deal with the topics being discussed, makes me say something that I wouldn't normally.

"Mom," I say, "what was my Dad like?" She flinches slightly and I regret immediately asking. My mother… Well I know she loved my father, and I think a lot. And I also know that she regrets that they did not get to stay together. Every once in a while she'll get this sort of faraway look.

"Come on." she'll say. "Lets go for a drive." Some of my earlier memories are of hoping in the car with her, sometimes with and sometimes without Kaylee. She would drive for hours and hours, just scanning ahead of her, until my and Kaylee would be bored sick. Finally, we'd stop and pull over at some faraway place, and take off walking in some direction.

I used to think that she was just funny, but later on I realized that she was searching for something. Well, someone, actually. I could tell this was the case because these where the times when she would be most likely to talk about my father. Kaylee would be back in the car, fumigating herself while she painted her nails, and it would be just my mother and me, walking here and there not really caring where we were going. She'd tell me little things, just tidbits.

"You know you have his curly hair." I remember her saying.

"Is it the same color as mine?" I'd ask.

There would be a long pause and then "No, his was much darker." And then she wouldn't say anything else.

It was sometime along these trips that I knew also that I could bring her to him, if I tried. My feet, you see, have a sort of instinctual way of knowing where to go, and will bring me there even if I don't know where it is. But I also knew for the first time that day, that bringing my mother to him would ruin everything for the rest of us.

Mike would come jogging up, and end our conversation. Kaylee would have called and told him that Mom had dragged us into the middle of god knows where. He would be furious, and he would also be deeply hurt, because he, like me, had at one point learned what my mother's trips meant.

Back to the hospital room, though. My mother sighed, a deep sigh, "Well," she said, "he was a lot like you."

"Did he always cause trouble too?"

Her brows furrow. "To a certain extent, yes."

I am crying again, I wipe away the tears, wincing as I brush my injured cheek. "I don't mean to, you know." I say. "I mean I do, but it's so funny at first. I never hurt people, it's just jokes, back when you where around people where fine with it. I just can't help it."

She looks at with a sort of desperation "Finna it's not your fault. I know your really upset––"

I am full out blubbering now "Mom, do you know how many times I've been suspended!" It's true. Act shocked if you wish, but bare in mind that incidents like todays little handcuff stunt are not exactly rare.

My mother reaches out and grabs my arm, with more strength than I honestly believed she possessed at this point. "Honey," she says, "this is not all your fault."

I look up, and around, an old habit of mine: looking for escape routes when nervous. "Honestly, Mom, I'm beginning to think it might be better if I just left home."

"You know…" She swallows stiffly "I thank that maybe… Maybe that would be a good idea."

I am completely blown away. Its one thing to say that type of thing yourself, when your honestly kind of digging around for pity, but it is an entirely different thing to hear it from your mother.

"Maaaaaaa!" I howl.

"Oh honey!" she says quickly. "I didn't mean it like that." I look at her, sniffling slightly. "Its just that I think, Finna, there might be a better place for you to be. Where you would be happier and… safer."

"I'm happy here!" I say throwing my head back and wailing in sadness.

"Ummm…" says my mother, weakly.

"And safe too!" I add.

"But honey, what about all those weird occurrences?" she presses. That stops me for a second. Weird occurrences, well, I've certainly had enough of those. You see, ever since I've been little, trouble for me has been like one of those bad head-colds that you just can't get rid of, and to make things worse other people often can't even see it.

Take for instance in preschool. One day Kaylee was walking me home when out of nowhere came this giant dog. I actually don't remember that much from the instance, except for the image of a pair of flickering of dark red eyes. Kaylee took off running, and I scampered up into a tree, which the dog circled around for a long time, before leaving. The oddest thing about this story is that I apparently claimed that it was at least as big as a horse.

Another time, in second grade, my best friend and I wandered into a cow field on a dare, when out of nowhere, there came this huge and very angry bull. At least that is the story that my friend told. I, on the other hand, saw a huge man charging towards us, with a bull's head. My friend and I took off running, and we managed to lose Mr. Bull man by dogging off into the woods, which were too thick for him to easily go through.

Now you would think that at this point that what ever twisted minded beings control my life would decide that this would be enough weirdness for one lifetime. Apparently not, though, because in third grade there was another odd happening.

I was walking to school with Kaylee, when out of nowhere there came this guy. Now what I know was really the case was that he was just some crazy guy riding on a horse, but to me, for some reason, it looked as though he was half horse and half human. He grabbed my sister by the waist, flipped me the bird, and took off running with her.

Kaylee was screaming like a banshee, and I'm pretty sure I was too. Thankfully, at that point in time I had this really annoying hello kitty metal lunch box. I instinctually threw it at the guys' head. It hit him pretty hard, with a sort of thunking sound. He dropped Kaylee, causing her to scream even more, and galloped of away from us, trampling my lunch box, moving slightly more erratically than before, I believed from having been concusses. Well, at least I got a new lunch box out of that scenario.

So ya, I guess there have been one or two odd and dangerous instances. I look t my mother, the same sad and hurt expression still glued to my face from my shock, I know, but now at least I'm not crying.

Sensing that she has my full attention, my mother begins to speak.

"There's a place, Finna, for people like you. Girls and boys who are… Gifted like you. And who have to face the same exact threats."

"You think I'm crazy, don't you." I say.

My mother simply shakes her head. "No, I've seen quite a few strange things myself, you know."

"What is this place?" I ask, cautiously.

"Well," she says, she's picking her words carefully I can see, and this makes me worried, "it's a sort of camp you see. Oh gods! If only I had your father here to explain."

I am so confused right now, that I almost don't notice a small slipup in my mother's speech, but then I do.

"What do you mean 'gods'?" I ask, suddenly even more puzzled.

"Well, you see––" My mother begins, but it is right then that the room door is flung open.

Mike stands at the entrance. I jump near clear out of my skin in fright. He is glaring at me, and I can tell that he's really, really, angry, perhaps even more so than he's ever been before.

"Finna!" He roars "You get over here right now!" Now if you haven't noticed, today I seem to be getting a lot of male characters yelling at me, and at this point its more annoying than frightening. I get up, though, and walk over to him, glaring at my own feet.

"I was only visiting my sick mother. Wouldn't that be what every good daughter would do?" My voice drips with my most acidic sarcasm.

"Your sister," bellows Mike, "is in her room right now crying!"

_And I,_ I think, _am in a hospital room crying. Who wins the pity fest now Mike?_

I am so angry right now, and I know I am about to say something that I'll really regret, but I'm like a ship who's sails are full of wind and who's moorings are breaking.

"I'm not even related to her Mike!" I yell. "And thank god for that, wouldn't want to have similar genetics to someone with _that _intelligence!" That was harsh, I know, Kaylee isn't even here to defend herself. But then again she doesn't seem really like the defending type from what she let her boyfriend do to me.

"Finna!" says my mother, shock and anger coming through in her voice. "How could you say something like that?"

Mike strides forward and grabs my arm hard, "Come on, we're going." he says, his voice measured and clipped in anger. He half drags me towards the door, I turn towards mom.

I wish when I spoke to her then my voice was kinder, sweeter, that I said I loved her, but instead, in a voice full of hatred, glaring at her, I said "Bye mom."

Actually that doesn't sound so bad in print.

But trust me, with the tone I used, I might as well have been saying "burn in hell."

Mike did not say anything as he dragged me to the elevator, or while we rode down. I continued to glare down at my feet. I kept on waiting for the anger that was bubbling up inside me to settle down, but it wasn't.

"It wasn't all my fault, you know––" I started to say. Mike cut me off though.

"No! You are not allowed to talk right now Finna. You will be quiet, and you will think about what you have done."

"Mike." I say, I am fighting to keep from screaming. "It was just a joke. Darren got really angry, and he hit me. He hit me across the ear." I am leaning in closer to Mike now, but he just turns away to the other side of the elevator.

"Mike, please––" I start again The door opens, though, and Mike starts off across the reception room towards the parking lot. I stand a little lost in the elevator, not sure what to do. Realizing that he's not going to turn and say anything, I hurry after him. As much anger as I might feel towards the man, I don't want to have to make the long walk home, in the dark.

You would think with all the crummy things that had happened in one day, that things might get a little better. Unfortunately my life was about to go up in flames. Literally.


End file.
